The Parisian Playboy

In Love with Her Boss #2

by Helen Brooks

Jacques Querruel appeared regularly in society magazines with a string of women. When he decided that he wanted shy, sexy Holly Stanton as his personal assistant, it was a fait accompli!

Holly fully intended not to be swept off her feet. But working long hours by Jacques's side, she was bombarded with temptation! And mixing business with pleasure was Jacques's specialty...!

Genres: Harlequin, Romance, Contemporary Romance, Hqn, Harlequin Presents, Harlequin Romance, Romantic

287 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2003

About the author

Rita Bradshaw was born on 1949 in Northampton, England, where she was educated as a good Christian. She met Clive, her husband, at the age of 16 andnow the magic is still there. They have three lovely children, Cara, Faye, and Benjamin, and have always had a menagerie of animals in the house, which at the present is confined to two endearing and very comical dogs who would make a great double act on TV! The children, friends, and pets all keep the house buzzing and the food cupboards empty but Helen wouldn't have it any other way. She still lives today in Northampton with her family. Although having enjoyed some wonderful holidays abroad she has never been tempted to live anywhere else, although she rather likes the idea of a holiday home close to the sea one day.

Being a committed Christian and fervent animal lover she finds spare time is always at a premium, but long walks in the countryside with her husband and dogs, meals out followed by the cinema or theatre, reading, swimming, and having friends over for dinner are all fitted in somehow. She also enjoys sitting in her wonderfully therapeutic, rambling old garden in the sun with a glass of red wine, (under the guise of resting while thinking of course!)

For years, she was a secretary. She began writing in 1990 as she approached that milestone of a birthday 40! She realized her two teenage ambitions (writing a novel and learning to drive) had been lost amid babies and hectic family life, so set about resurrecting them.

Her first novel was for Mills and Boon and was accepted after one rewrite in 1992 as Helen Brooks, and she passed her driving test (the former was a joy and the latter an unmitigated nightmare!) She has written 50 novels as well as several sagas as Rita Bradshaw.

Since becoming a full-time writer she has found her occupation one of pure joy and often surprised when her characters develop a mind of their own but she loves exploring what makes people tick and finds the old adage "truth is stranger than fiction" to be absolutely true. She would love to hear from any readers care of Mills & Boon.

Reviews

[Naksed · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such a sad story! Sadder than I like them in my escapist romances, especially because the author was so successful in getting me inside the heroine’s mind fraught with terrible memories of her abuse in the foster care system and a host of other insecurities and emotional instability brought on by constant rejections, from her bio parents to many uncaring, neglectful and downright abusive foster parents. The hero was too good to be true, a real Prince Charming. Though he has a reputation as a manhwore, the heroine soon finds out it has been wildly exaggerated. He is more of a serial monogamist who has simply not found his forever woman yet. As soon as he meets the heroine, he is single-minded in his pursuit of her and he doesn’t even rely on that tired trope of dangling an OW to make her jealous. The whole thing read like a Cinderella type fairy tale complete with saccharine sweet epilogue. Still, it made a nice change for me from a host of terrible non-romantic romances pairing doormats with unrepentant manwhores so I will take sad and sweet over those any day!

[Vintage · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can already tell that I won’t do this book justice. Read for the wonderful, romantic hero, the fictional hero.

This one starts off with a bang as the heroine slaps the office slug that is sexually harassing her. The too good to be true hero steps in and offers support then a magical job in Paris. The hero is smitten with the heroine and pulls out all the stops to woo her including introducing her to his family. Frankly, with the lack of quivering body parts, OTT sex and the nice hero I am shocked that Harlequin HP published this.

The heroine adores the hero but has a tragic past that has shut her down completely. It’s true life angst rather than HP angst. She had been in foster care since she was a baby, and her foster father tried to rape her when she eight. Eight! No one believed her and she was shuffled around from one dismal foster family to another. Had to raise an eyebrow at this as you would think that counselors in the foster system would be alert to abusive situations, but HB doesn’t oversell it.

The heroine is very shut down pushes back as the H pushes for love and commitment, and this is where it falls south. The h does the HP standard of leaving to save the H from her damaged self. All comes well in the end with another HP standard, an accident that shows the h how much she really loves the H. In real life there probably wouldn’t be a happily ever after without some therapy, but thankfully HB spares us the sex as a therapy tool.

Not a perfect story, but the hero is so romantic and the details about life in Paris are so well done that I’m going with 4 stars.

[*CJ* · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Parisian Playboy" is the story of Holly and Jacques.

What a tiring book, but with such a great hero.

This book follows a very common Helen Brooks trope: The h works for the H, and they come in contact due to a workplace harassment complaint. The H is smitten, and offers the heroine a promotion in Paris. She then reluctantly agrees.
There he starts sweetly courting her, but every time he approaches her, she shies away. She shuns his every advance and hides the reason from him: she had a traumatic childhood with a pervy foster father and since then has withdrawn in her shell.

The WHOLE book is the devoted hero putting his heart on the line, confessing his love and begging the heroine to explain or accept him, and her rejecting him 99% of the time. Yes, she had a bad past but instead of getting help or doing anything about it, she wallowed in self pity. The hero had to have a life threatening accident for the heroine to finally gain some sense.

If you want to try this out, do it purely for the caring, lovely hero. Ah he was SO GOOD!
The heroine was a self deprecating mess but I'm glad she did eventually realize her error.

But once again, a GREAT, heartwarming epilogue!

Safe
3/5

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! If you love a smitten determined hero u will adore this book. Jacques is the most swoonworthy hero ever. Heroine had a lot of issues, she was abused as a child so she kept pushing him away but this hero was so dreamy he would do anything for Holly...even lose his life! I wish he was real lol

[SassyLeg · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Margo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this is a comfortable, sweet read.

[Mtve41 · Rating 2 out of 5]

I haven’t read much from HB and whatever little I have hasn’t sat well. A personal preference and nothing against the writer. I find the writing slow paced and the H isn’t as cruel as I’d like him to be.

I was expecting great things -workplace romance and all but never happened. The H is alpha but nice and puts his heart out on a plate. The h is stuck up and wallowing in misery and can’t move on from her past. I found her rather robotic in her feelings for the H.

Nothing unforgettable.

[Tia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel was so much like "The Mistress Agreement" by Helen Brooks except much more beautiful in my opinion. The emotional level in which you connect to the characters is downright astounding. I greatly enjoyed this novel. I absolutely adored the epilogue and I hope books like this and other likes it will bring knowledge to people because out in the real world children are abused, both sexually, physically, emotionally and mentally. Not just foster children but children as a whole. I appreciate that this book touched on such a subject and hope it will continue to happen. Even though it was a harlequin, there is nothing more that true information, whether presented in fiction or non-fiction, that will all help us grow with awareness and how to possible help future children out there in our world.

[LIA Kh. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is actually not bad, but the pace to slow, and I'm irritating with the heroine aka Holly. She goes round and round to disown her own feeling towards Jacques. I don't see the point why the story only about Holly feeling, I expect more actions and less self pitying of course. But the ending is ended smoothly. So yeah 2,5 stars for this books

[♡︎ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay i went into this expecting a light, fun read but it was actually depressing. It was filled with very heavy themes I will not go into because I do not want to trigger anyone. It also kinda felt like a vintage HP more than a modern one. Still worth a read though!

[Missy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A heartwrenching tale of finding love & learning to trust enough to let go of the past.

[Megzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Sandhya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a fan of workplace romance because professionalism but the man respects people's bodily autonomy so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Also the blurb is incredibly inaccurate.....she's not even his assistant. She was someone else's secretary and then became a textile technologist which I didn't even know was a job but sounds hella cool. The book is more about her getting over her fear of men because she was abused in foster care.

[Pauline Destinugrainy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nyaris bosan dengan sikap Holly yang terus menutup dan menarik dirinya. Untungnya si Jacques ini cowok yang sabar dan setia. Yang pasti sih cinta mati sama si Holly. Tapi Holly jg punya alasan kuat dengan semua penolakannya, karena trauma masa lalunya.
Ini hq-nya lumayan sopan sih... cuman cium-cium aja. Ditunggu kejadian sehabis menikah, eh malah lompat ke sepuluh tahun ke depan. Huh..

[Debby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Helen Brooks’ books are usually 4 or 5 stars for me. She is great at writing romance.

But this book was such a slow read.

In the beginning the h is being harassed by an office jerk and the H comes to her rescue. But that part of the book seemed to drag and drag. I noticed I became impatient.

[Maura · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was definitely not what I expected, but I still found it very interesting. Jacques is a wealthy business owner and encounters his employee, Holly being sexually harassed in the workplace. He steps in and goes about solving the problem, but he's intrigued by Holly and wants to get to know her better. In an effort to do so and to help further her career, he invites her to be on his exclusive design team in Paris. Holly has a traumatic past that has caused her to be unable to trust men and Jacques is no exception. In fact, she trusts him even less because of the feelings he causes her to feel. So she's even more confrontational and sometimes downright rude to Jacques, even though she also seems to like him and be attracted to him. She does agree to work for him in Paris though believing there's no way he could want more than a business relationship. She learns how wrong she is, as Jacques sets out to woo her - very patiently - trying to break down all the walls she's built, learn her secrets and earn her love.

This was a fairly angsty read that I overall liked very much, except for a few details towards the end. Jacques was absolute perfection, I'll say that. I positively adore the heroes who make the fall first and then set out to win the heroine. And what I really like with what the author did here is, instead of making Jacques out to be someone who only wanted to get the heroine into bed (as is so common) it's very clear that he wants all of Holly. Yes, he's attracted to her, but he wants so much more from her - he wants her to love him the way he loves her. And his attempts were so endearing. I didn't even mind that this was a "clean-romance" because I so enjoyed watching Jacques try to win her over. I even liked Holly and respected her reluctance to trust Jacques, as it made it much more interesting to Jacques trying and failing to overcome Holly's past. But I lost my patience with the prickly Holly about the time that she felt the need to disappear and run off back to London without telling anybody where she was going . I'll grant that she was scared, but she gave no consideration to how Jacques might feel or how scared he might be for her. I have a tendency to dislike heroines who run instead of facing their fears and I leaned that way with Holly. It seemed there was no softening with Holly and I really wanted to see her begin to trust Jacques, even just a little. So her sudden turn around when she learned that he'd nearly died in an accident coming to see her didn't feel right. Especially considering that part of her fear was that she couldn't trust him to always be there with her, and so when he nearly dies it would make sense that it would reinforce those fears, rather than have her completely abandon them. The ending was nice, but would have been better with a heartfelt apology from Holly, given how much she hurt and worried Jacques.

[Susan in Perthshire · Rating 1 out of 5]

There are parts of this book which are brilliantly well written. I think if this book were written as a piece of women’s fiction and was 35,000 words longer, it would have been a powerful book - dealing as it does with a really damaged young woman who had experienced terrible abuse at the age of 8.

But it’s a category romance of 50,000 words and that means that the topic could not be dealt with appropriately. As a category romance, I was utterly frustrated by the heroine who stayed locked in her prickly, damaged state for far too long. Holly’s constant prickly suspicion, distrust and unpleasant treatment of Jaques became more and more frustrating as I read through the book. It took the hero to be almost killed in an accident for the heroine to show any sense.

In contrast, the hero Jacques, was just delicious and I wanted him to find someone who deserved his love, not the miserable, utterly damaged Holly.

Mills and Boon books are too short to cover serious issues appropriately. Holly’s experiences as a child really would damage anyone and she needed serious therapy to get better. This issue wasn’t dealt with properly in this book and I think it was a mistake to choose this wound for the heroine..

Sorry - not my cup of tea. The writing deserves 5 stars but the plot premise and its execution is 1 star. So I’m rating it 2.5/3 stars.

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a pull-at-your-heart-strings romance. Ms Brooks has a knack for creating heroes and heroines that are relatable and easy to cheer on for their HEA. Often in HPlandia it's the hero with the tortured past, but this is one where the heroine has a childhood trauma that she has never truly faced and put to rest. A trauma she spoke of when it happened, and then never to be spoken of out loud again. Jacques senses there is something dark that pains Holly, holding her back from a relationship with him. He's patient and it becomes clear he's totally smitten. Holly is amazed and thankful for the strength of her passion for Jacques. She'd been afraid she had become frigid and would never respond normally to a man. But every time Jacques attempts to become closer, she shuts him down. There are some poignant moments that make this romance one to remember. Wonderful HEA and a most welcome epilogue.

[Ujjwala · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this a lot, but I wished the title could be similar to a vintage title such as Falling in love in Paris, The Frenchman who loved me, Amber eyes, Silver darling and so on.

There are many things uncommon in this story, which I liked:
• Hero's name - Jacques.
• A hero who was poor and got wronged by the rich, but who did not turn too cynical or broody about it.
• Heroine's occupation - textile technologist.
• The backstory of heroine's harrowing past.
• Discussion of fostering children.

Push-and-pull between the heroine's decision to trust another person in her life was at times frustrating, but understandable.

Epilogue was especially nice.

Overall, this was a story I liked reading and the happy resolution at the end made me smile !

[Tiyafauzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Holly's inner struggle and the most understanding Jacques. His character wasn't too mainstream, he wasn't kind of a dictator CEO or something like that. Beside that, before I read it, sometimes I imagined to create a character with a complicated and prejudiced inner struggle, easily drawing unilateral conclusions, but now I'm aware. Why would she want to make me drown her in the deepest sea? It just made me felt a little bit excited (to the left) of her.

[Ellyn (Mrs. Darcy in my Dreams) · Rating 3 out of 5]

****This had definite trigger warnings of child abuse memories. Beware ***

I wish I had known that, before reading, the h had emotional trauma that would be a main subject of the book. The trama was real and sad, but not the kind of angst I like reading about. The H was a perfect Hero, but a little dense to not guess her deep secret knowing her childhood circumstances. This was predictable after the trama is revealed to the reader early on.

[Hada · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.9 ★

Siento que el final fue muy acelerado, pero de todas las historias de esta compilación, hasta ahora es la mejor. Aunque debo decir que me desesperó la aparición de cierto personaje, con su actitud y esas míseras disculpas.

Y este momento:
"—¿Has hecho terapia?"

Que rabia, en serio...
Odio cuando te presionan a hacer algo, porque para mi eso era presión y todavía siento que de rositas así de simple y pide perdón. Que estrés.

[Vee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really liked the H, he admitted he loved the heroine first and he h wasn't ready to admit that until the end of the book. Not a fan of the h since she was being difficult and refused the give the H the benefit of the doubt. Bottomline, I enjoyed this, there was no smut here or steamy scenes.

[Jo]

AMOR EN PARÍS (Spanish Version)

[Awotorm · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved it. I liked how patient, persistent and understanding Holly's prince was.
A true playboy falls inlove. How epic!

[Natha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two years! >.<

[TSN ☮ · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF 30%

Time has not been nice to this one.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's well written. Love it

[S Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Started with low expectations. But it was a sweet love story.

[More Books Than Time · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good characters.